Too many complaints!

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The past few days there has been several new threads and hundreds of replies with people complaining and doom-saying; 'this'll be the final nail in the coffin, you'll see, this is what's going to make SL kick the bucket! I'm out!'. I feel I must complain about this excessive complaining!

I'm a cynic, and I'm suspicious of everything and everyone - I think it more plausible that mankind will bring itself to extinction than that we'll one day colonise other planets, but I'm not irrationally cynical or pessimistic, and projecting one's distrust and fear to fill the gaps in that which one doesn't understand and then freaking out about it is absolutely pointless. I suspect that our ancestors once believed that the sky would fall down when they heard thunder, but in time they realised that it wasn't so as thunder came and went and the sky remained - so they tried to rationalise it, and some concluded that it must be a wagon in the clouds, pulled by two goats, carrying a red-haired, bearded guy with a big hammer, probably chasing away giants, which must be a good thing because then the giants wouldn't attack them. And then they started worshiping the giant-chasing ginge and declared him the god of thunder!

This isn't the first time LL changes something in their operations, and this isn't the first time that the community has freaked out and collectively whipped each other to a frenzied panic - Linden Lab has been around for twenty years, business don't last that long through taking irrational, impulsive decisions. In this case, the rumble appears to be about LL doing what is legally necessary for them to handle currency - if that isn't the allegorical equivalent of chasing away a giant to protect us, I don't know what is. Skepticism is healthy, but doom-saying is not - asking questions is good, for it is the mother of answers, but accusing without understanding is what caused the century-spanning mass hysteria with an estimate of 35,000-100,000 people to be killed for 'witchcraft'.

It isn't the only thing, though, there's been several cases where people show very clear symptoms of the 'I'm on the Internet'-syndrome; communicating through text basically makes us all psychopaths, it removes all sense of vocal and visual emotional emphasis from the 'speaker', and in many cases people chose to project a negative tone to someone else's words and lose sight of the context. People don't always agree with each other, but it's fully possible for people to disagree without getting their knickers in a twist about it and getting 'offended' by the other party having a different point of view or conclusion. I've been called 'hateful', but I don't 'hate' anyone that disagrees with me, that would be absolutely petty - just as it would be delusional of me to claim that I'm flawless and never do the same. But when people jump at each other's throat because they have had disagreements in the past, and the subject doesn't matter but having a chance at picking at each other comes first - or when people go to some SL gossip blog where they present their opponents' words out of context to calumniate them outside the reach of the forum's and LL's jurisdiction, the pettiness just reaches a level of absolute absurdity.

I like arguments, I like when people present me with alternative views to an issue so that I may test the resolution of my stance and find new nuances to bring into the calculation - which might even change my stance completely. It's the process through which people grow, it's progression. And people may be passionate about some issues, and that's fine, I'm passionate about things too (just try discussing typefaces, tea or adhesives with me!) - but there's going to be no progression if the focus of the argument turns from presenting one's perspective to attacking one's opponents. Again, I'm neither flawless nor delusional enough to think that I am, but it doesn't help much if just one party tries to address the topic at hand - even the most skilled orators (and I do not count myself among them) will eventually be derailed when met with bad enough rhetoric.

To conclude; life is too short for disappointing cakes and empty quarreling. Should you still find yourself arguing for the sake of arguing (and I don't expect this post to somehow be the salvation of the Internet, or even this little corner thereof), there's a Swedish proverb; den som ger sig in i leken, får leken tåla ('one who joins the game, must abide the game').

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I just wish the mods would quarantine each new wave of madposting to a single thread.

The vast majority of complaints from each of these recent waves has been utter drivel. The poster in question doesn't understand the terms used and so jumps to a conclusion that's disconnected with reality. Someone with more brain cells than fingers will come along and explain the situation, the angry person is now both enlightened and no longer angry... and then two minutes later that garbage gets posted again by someone new. It really doesn't take long for my attitude to shift from "I'm afraid that you're mistaken; here's what is actually going on" to "you're wrong and your opinion license has been revoked, please be quiet".

At least if they have their own cesspit then it's all contained, and the rest of us don't have to drown in Alex Jones-tier posting about how the evil gubmit is gonna make brainwashed clones of us all because 1 in 10,000 of them had to fill in a mandatory tax form.

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I just wish the mods would quarantine each new wave of madposting to a single thread.

That was the intended purpose of this thread, but I took so long to post it as I realised I hadn't had my morning tea yet that someone else posted another thread for that purpose whilst I was sipping my tea.

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That was the intended purpose of this thread, but I took so long to post it as I realised I hadn't had my morning tea yet that someone else posted another thread for that purpose whilst I was sipping my tea.

i would defo go over there and complain about this to that someone else. A proper cup of tea ruined, is totally worth a jolly good complaining about 😻

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I already did! And now my tea cup is empty, so I have even more to complain about! This whole morning has been nothing but an incessant string of outrage upon outrage!

i am coming out in outrage in sympathy with your outrage. That you have an empty cup and no tea is all LL's fault you know. This random person I met on SL told me that they have a friend who has a sister who knows somebody else what comes on SL as well. They always have an empty cup and no tea every time they log in. So yanno !!

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i am coming out in outrage in sympathy with your outrage. That you have an empty cup and no tea is all LL's fault you know. This random person I met on SL told me that they have a friend who has a sister who knows somebody else what comes on SL as well. They always have an empty cup and no tea every time they log in. So yanno !!

And guess what. I now made a fresh cup of tea - and I'm out of biscuits! Well, technically not out of them, but I took the last in this packet, so I'm going to have to open up a new one for my next tea and biscuit!

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And guess what. I now made a fresh cup of tea - and I'm out of biscuits! Well, technically not out of them, but I took the last in this packet, so I'm going to have to open up a new one for my next tea and biscuit!

thats terrible. The extra cost of tea and biscuits that you are now incurring as a consequence of LL providing you with a free forum to be on anytime you want is totally unforgivable

p.s if you do decide to flounce over this outrage, can I haz your biscuits please ?!

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That was the intended purpose of this thread, but I took so long to post it as I realised I hadn't had my morning tea yet that someone else posted another thread for that purpose whilst I was sipping my tea.

That thread is now gone.

2 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Yes, that one disappeared. Along, possibly, with the person who posted it.

It was a purely jokey thread. I'm not sure why it was removed, or, for that matter, why this one wasn't.

Possibly for the very reason that I stated in my comment. It is sometimes difficult to figure out what types of joke threads are considered trolling and which ones aren't.